Meet Craig E. Higgins | Book Writer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Craig E. Higgins and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Craig E., what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
I pursued writing I think for the same reasons I’ve pursued all my creative endeavors – there are these ideas I have in my head which I feel compelled to bring to life. I have this real desire to make new things, to look at different and sometimes disparate elements of music or art or writing, and combine those in ways that maybe haven’t been attempted before.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’ve written one novel so far, ‘Artichoke Stars and Chicken Fried Shark’. If I had to pick a genre, I would say YA sci-fi. But really the book is a mix of YA, body horror and is also a meditation on fanaticism and the monsters it can make of us. I believe my work stands out for its voice and perspective, myself having come of age at a confusing time. ‘Artichoke Stars’ is set in 1980, which was about five years after the end of the Vietnam War. It was an uncool time and I think a lot of Americans were struggling with that sense of loss of identity as Americans. And that sometimes came out in strange ways, particularly in the culturally conservative Deep South where the book is set.

So far as doing this professionally, I have a bread-and-butter job but have aspirations of being a commercially-successful author. Creatively though, I take my work seriously and try to practice writing every day – Stephen King’s old adage about cranking out 2,000 words a day being a guiding light to my general approach. I’m late to the game and am still trying to figure some things out. I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned from writing books is to be patient with whatever limitations I have in terms of time devoted to the craft, and to be persistent in pursuing my vision.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I actually live outside of Las Vegas, but up until this past August worked and spent time in the city for many years. So, I suppose we could talk about Sin City. My favorite place to eat in Vegas is Lawry’s the Prime Rib. Reason I got into that place was, there was this news report about a famous actor getting kicked out of there for being a little tipsy or something. And I watched that and thought, ‘You know what? I want to check this place out.’ So, my wife and I went there for our anniversary and let me tell you, if you’re going to drop some serious coin on a single meal, Lawry’s is an excellent choice. From the Art Deco furnishings that make you feel like you’ve stepped onto the set of a Brian DePalma period piece to those aluminum submarine things they cook and slice the prime rib in, all those elements combine for a genuinely memorable dining experience.

I also like hanging out in the catacombs of shops and restaurants that is the shopping section of the Venetian. You don’t even have to gamble – there’s a ton of cool stuff to check out down there. They got a donut place you can go where you pay like seven bucks for a single maple-bacon donut that has a sugary reconstruction of a bacon slice on top. It’s stuff like that makes Las Vegas cool.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
For my person, I would pick my English teacher my senior year of high school, John Fuchs. Fuchs turned me onto to bent Southern literature, giving me a taste for a type of writing indigenous to the part of the world I grew up in. He was a strange cat, frankly an original thinker. Mr. Fuchs would at times get up on his desk, go on all fours, and bark like a dog. Or there was the time he threw a plastic fish across the classroom. We’d read an Ibsen play in class and he’d do the doctor’s voice in this deliberately fake-Swedish accent. Or, totally out of the blue, he’d go on some rambling story about the time he worked for the highway department as a young man and found roadside construction not to his liking. I wrote a book called ‘Artichoke Stars and Chicken Fried Shark’ and I’d like to think John Fuchs would’ve appreciated the intent of writing such a work even if he didn’t get into it himself.

So, there you go. That’s my shout-out: John Fuchs, prep school teacher of future lawyers and wholly bold mind. He was one of the great ones.

Website: https://www.craigehiggins.com/

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Twitter: https://x.com/CEHigginsAuthor

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Image Credits
Headshots courtesy of Terje Riisnaes. Book cover artwork by Stephanie Anduro.